Widow Clicquot

"Widow Clicquot" is an art film with historical chops helping those of us who love champagne and those who study Napolean. "Widow" is important in that title because in the early 19th century Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) challenged the 1804 Napoleonic code that didn't allow women to be business owners unless she was a widow.

Throughout the story, flashbacks allow us to see how she became widowed and how she grew into a winemaker helping to establish forever the méthode champenoise. The contemporary scenes allow reflections on the past and, most importantly, the role of women in the early 19th century. Although the early parts where she is struggling and learning the business of producing champagne is visually dark, Bennett infuses Barbe with enough potential energy to light up the screen.

More exciting than seeing her romances with men and wine is the process of refining her test samples into what has been known as "Comet Champagne" after the inspiration of a comet in her sky at that time. Her formula now is identified as Clicquot, a gold standard for fine champagne.

It's possible some would like to discount the feminist angle of this rich biography, but at their peril. The seeds of reasonable progress are sown here because of her excellence in developing the winery and thereby one of the world's greatest wines.

The dramatic tale, from reality, is as powerful as any romantic drama today. Too bad some will miss it out of a fear of being preached to about women's place. It is all about human ingenuity and ambition, male or female.

Working in the industry, I am aware of the place that Madame Clicquot holds in the champagne world to this day. I had read this book and learned some very interesting things about what she did and how she did it. More so, some of her 19th century innovations that are still today's standards. Maybe her most important innovation, the riddling of the bottles during the bottle fermentation, is bearly noted and definitely not named.

What came across in the movie was almost none of that. This ended up somewhat of a confusing love story set against the vineyards of the Champagne region of France. Even her love story with M. Clicquot is ignored, even to the fact and reasons for their marriage taking place in the wine caves under Reims.

This could have been a great story highlighting a woman who really beat the odds when everything was working against her. I had hoped that this might be a good movie for my co-workers to view to learn more about a product we sell quite often. Having watched it, I cannot do that in good conscience, however!

A very good film exploring the start of Veuve Cliquet although I felt it could have explored a lot more about how her champagne mixing made the drink such a success rather than focussing on her obviously manic husband. 90 minutes was about 30 minutes too short for such an interesting subject played superbly by. Haley Bennett. The cast was excellent and some compelling characters, which again cloud have been explored more deeply, e.g. What was the past of the distributor, what was the relationship with the father and workers? Overall one of the better films I have seen in 2024 and highly recommend.

Haley Bennett performs the role of Cliquot quite admirably. The supporting cast is fine but aside from her performance no other actor or actress is memorable. There is a lot of dead time in this movie which is likely because the only real point of the movie is to show that she had to overcome the politics of the time with Napoleonic laws and men believing she wasn't cut out to run the vineyard. I would have liked to see more scenes showing how hard she had to work aside from just constantly watching her mix ingredients in vials. There are some parts of her facing men who doubted her, but I wanted more so you could really root for her.

The court scene at the end I thought had so much potential to be used to tell her story of what she had to go through in greater detail, but instead it was decided to just be an exclamation point for her story.

As a side note, all of the accents are very British which is confusing to me considering they're supposed to be French.

Overall, it's not a bad film, and shows that individuals have the ability to overcome their political surroundings. However, it certainly isn't one that will wow you either.

This was only entertaining enough to prevent me from dropping it halfway through, but that's not saying much because I'm not used to dropping films in general; I found myself waiting for it to end. The female protagonist is supposed to be a historical figure who invented several new methods for champagne production and revolutionised the industry. Yet in this film she doesn't feel like someone who commands respect or is inspirational, she comes across as meek and agreeable. Her deceased husband takes up too much screen time and her love affair with her merchant feels unnecessary, why exactly does she have to be sexualised in a movie about how innovative she was? I guess her husband being her raison d'etre wasn't quite enough, they had to sexually involve another man who also happened to be an important employee that her business depended on heavily.

In a weirdly vague manner, when Barbe was having a conversation with her husband about his relationship with the merchant (Droite), it was hinted that they may have had feelings that went beyond friendship between them; it was also vaguely hinted that the merchant may be attracted to men in a scene where he was supposedly flirting with a new male employee. So what exactly was that for? No reason other than the fact that this film came out in 2024 I suppose. I almost thought that the flashback plot would involve cheating and some weird open relationship situation involving the trio.

If you're a champagne enthusiast watching this, don't expect any scenes explaining much about the innovations she came up with, because there are virtually none. If I'm to be charitable, I can say the only redeeming quality is how dedicated the main character seems to her "craft", but whether or not you will agree will probably heavily depend on your mood because it's not substantial, especially since her main motivation is her late husband. Overall I wouldn't recommend this; it fails as a character study, it fails as a drama and it's also a pretty pathetic attempt at a "feminist" film. Let's be blunt and just admit it's ultimately one big advertisement for the champagne brand in question.